Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 23/02/2008, WJhonson@aol.com WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
The point is, that the legalistic interpretation of what is "free" under the license is so narrow that we've been blocked from posting for example images off book covers, which is tendentious.
A book cover is not free unless it's specifically licensed as such by the copyright owner.
Not necessarily. All laws and rules are subject to different interpretations. Believing that there is always a black and white reading of rules is overly simplistic.
If that's what you think of as tendentious, it's hardly going to surprise anyone if you describe a lot of the tagging as tendentious.
It's tendentious when those tags are promoting a particular interpretation of the rules.
"Free" does NOT mean "we can probably get away with using this here under fair use", it means "either the copyright on this image has lapsed or the owner grants all people the right to use the image in a manner compatible with our site license."
Sure, "getting away with" is a wrong-headed approach. "Fair use" must first of all be fair, and someone who approaches the problem with a sense of fair-mindedness is unlikely to get into trouble.with the real copyright owners. If they complain about it he will be all too ready to accommodate them. The fact is that the owners of many images are not easily identifiable. Many copyrights are effective nullities because their owners don't exist; the frequency of these nullities increases with the age of the material.
Ec